William Orbit, the legendary musician and producer, has announced a new London show. “William Orbit: The Journey Continues” will take place at his favourite venue, the Notting Hill Arts Club, on Friday, 26 September 2025.
Orbit, who rescued the careers of both Madonna and Britney Spears, recently took to the stage at the same venue to relive some career highlights.
Tickets go on sale on Friday, 15 August 2025, through ARD.
William Wainwright, the son of two schoolteachers, dropped out of school at the age of sixteeen. William Orbit, the producer of Madonna, Blur, and Britney Spears, is on stage in Notting Hill at the age of sixty-eight.
Had young Billy followed a traditional path, there is no doubt he would have been a successful academic. For the assembled fans, treated to a casual retrospective of Orbit’s contributions to music, it is clear that his real classroom is the dancefloor.
The evening’s lesson begins with “Funky Love Vibrations,” a track released by Orbit as Bassomatic. In many ways the successor to Torch Song, Bassomatic captured the vibe of the early 1990s perfectly. Stuttering, gated sounds and flowing, delayed bleeps created a party atmosphere above a solid rhythm. Brought to the stage, it loses none of its freshness.
The crew for the night has Pips Taylor spinning tunes before the band take the stage Callum Dearden is on bass. Erire Obano handles most of the vocals and keeps the vibe going. James Hockley takes control of keyboards. A lot of work has been done by Orbit’s guitar tech, who has at least ten instruments lined up around the stage.
There are improvised interludes; fragments of tracks that are sometimes hints rather than Greatest Hits scorchers. But there are those, too. Shaznay Lewis of All Saints fame joins proceedings for a performance of “Pure Shores.” “Water from a Vine Leaf” grows slowly, slowly, slowly, into an ecstatic phase. And the building shakes for “Ray of Light.”
Orbit supervises proceedings like an impish don. He spins in his office chair while picking at his guitar. Obano is crowned. There is an encouraging squeeze for Dearden after he leads vocals for one track. He makes it look easy, but William Orbit – A Journey is a moment of fun that took a lifetime to prepare.
William Orbit has experienced a few things in his time: building a studio in a squat run by refugees from Franco; collaborating with Madonna; producing Blur; running a progressive house and techno label; rescuing Britney’s career; hoovering up more white lines than the Wembley parking lot; experiencing a psychic break; and then regaining a sense of mission with a set of creative collaborators.
The last of these is what brings us to an event at Dolby’s flagship listening room in Soho. It takes the form of a series of paintings from Orbit’s catalogue, set to tracks from his concept album, The Painter. Animations based on the psychedelic-tinged images roll past as the native Atmos tech breathes space into the individual tracks. It is a high-specification journey through the imagination of a creative mind that has been stretched to its limits.
Orbit is an artistic genius – there is no shade of a doubt. His bag of tricks is deeper than most, and the familiar bubbling of delayed Juno 106 sounds covers The Painter as generously as it has many of his productions over the past four decades. We have come a long way since the dark pulses of “Scorpion” (from 1987’s Strange Cargo) or the dancefloor-led tape collage of “Prepare to Energise” (the 1983 single from Torch Song), but the Orbit touch remains both deft and recognisable. The question is, have the intervening years – and the substances imbibed – dulled and dented it?
Some will think so. Fans of Madonna’s “Ray of Light” or “Beautiful Stranger” might be disappointed by the lack of ecstatic release across the tracks on The Painter. They probably won’t appeal to followers of All Saints searching for the pop heaven of “Pure Shores,” either. Britney’s army of supporters will feel let down by the lack of material to lift the Louisiana lass back up the charts. Audiences from more than one generation, across multiple genres, who have counted on Orbit to move their feet, will have their expectations dashed.
More fool them. Orbit’s own work has always been wide-ranging and even experimental. For every “Water from a Vine Leaf,” there has been a “Last Lagoon.” The songs on The Painter aren’t written for the charts (even if he dabbles in reggaeton with the Canadian singer, Lido Pimienta). They are companions to his visual work as a painter, as well as sonic adventures with old and new collaborators; each of whom has impressed their own mark on the material. Yes, there is a Leftfield remix of “Bank of Wildflowers,” the result of work with Georgia, but the rework isn’t really the point. You don’t expect Polly Scattergood to turn in a substitute for Blur, either. Beth Orton’s presence on two songs might raise hopes for another “She Cries Your Name,” but only for those with preset expectations. Instead, there is a dreaminess and ambience more attuned to the psychedelic imagery of Orbit’s paintings.
There are also tracks with Katie Melua, the late Hukwe Zawose (here in sampled form), Ali Love, Gloria Kaba and Laurie Mayer. The latter has often worked in Orbit’s shadow – so far as the PR machinery has focussed on him alone – but has been a key part of his story since the earliest days of Guerilla and Torch Song. Her own Black Lining album is a lost classic, and both she and Kaba worked on Madonna’s MDNA project with Orbit. As much as anything else, The Painter is about connections, and the circle that Orbit has drawn to it provides a sense of continuity with his previous work. After the challenges he has had, the need for familiarity is understandable – for Orbit and listeners alike.
Rico Conning’s musical career began with The Lines, a legendary post-punk combo. He went on to become a studio wizard, recording Wire, remixing Depeche Mode, and producing Martin Gore and Frank Tovey for Mute Records. As the engineer for Guerilla Studios, Conning worked closely with William Orbit and Laurie Mayer, whom he joined as Torch Song in 1995.
If you look at the sleeve notes, you will find Conning credited on works by S’Express, Test Dept., Laibach, Coil, Colourbox, The Bambi Slam, Pere Ubu – getting the picture, yet?
So, when Conning steps into the studio to record his own material, what do you get? The answer is Frogmore, a sophisticated and weighty album.
The opening track, “Mustang,” is named for the guitar Conning used on The Lines’ “White Nights.” That song became part of the core Torch Song curriculum (Bonus points for knowing that a version was recorded with Sarah Blackwood at the microphone but it is Laurie Mayer’s voice on the track that was released). Conning notes that there are some thematic elements in common between “White Nights” and “Mustang;” but, to the attuned ear, there are also echoes of Colin Newman in the vocals. That is a cool thing.
The song runs to almost ten minutes, which would represent almost half of a side of a vinyl LP. As an album opener, it would be an unusual and commercially brave choice in the hit-driven world where Conning has made his name. Freed from any profit motive and the restrictions of physical media, however, the atmosphere is able to spread like the bands of a rainbow.
In any event, for those keeping time, the next track clocks in at 15:49.
“Frogmore” takes its name from a cabin that Conning occupied in Malibu for many years. It goes through themes as an electro-ambient composition before transitioning into a poem based upon Conning’s memories of the space and its sounds.
“Fluxus” follows – not a reference to the art movement that drew in Yoko Ono so much as a combination of Cocteau Twins chords and a synth-led part that Conning had been looking for a home for since 1994. Nestled between the reverberating guitar sections, it is a neat piece of Krautrock that could have been carried out of Conny’s Studio twenty years earlier.
Conning’s a talented singer, and when his voice is joined to the mix the song is lifted into a dreampop state of mind. This is music for running along a beach or watching the Sun drop into the ocean.
The album wraps with “Mercury,” drawn from a forthcoming project, On a Wire. In places, it has the psychedelic feel of a Nico song, and one can almost feel her waiting for the cue to come in.
Frogmore is an accomplished work. Conning has drawn deeply from his well to create a personal work that will resonate with an open-minded audience as naturally as anything from the artists he has recorded.
Torch Song was originally the creation of three friends from London: William Orbit, Laurie Mayer and Grant Gilbert. Gilbert's place was later taken up by Rico Conning of The Lines.
The project was enormously influential. It cemented Orbit's reputation, well before he was called upon by Madonna and Spears to restart their careers. It showcased the talent of Mayer as a creative force and a peerless vocalist. With Conning in the mix, Torch Song took the Guerilla sound from the domain of danceable pop into electro-ambient territory.
In 1995, Torch Song performed on London's South Bank. This is the proof.
Depeche Mode fans will know Rico Conning’s name best from the Blind Mix of “Strangelove” or the Black Tulip Mix of “A Question of Time.” Nick Cash will come to mind first as Fad Gadget’s drummer. Jo Forty’s name is less bound up with the heroes of early electronic music; but, together with Conning, Cash and ex-Alternative TV guitarist Mick Linehan, he formed the core of The Lines, a celebrated post-post incubator.
Founded in London in the immediate wake of punk and its DIY culture, The Lines came together when Conning and Forty met on an English literature course. As Conning tells the story:
We both had a strong interest in music. For me, music was probably a stronger interest than English literature. I found the study of music very boring. I didn’t like to study it; just to play it. We decided to start a band. This was around ’76, and a lot of other people in London were focused on the same thing about the same time. It took us a couple of years to get to where we thought we were good enough to put a record out, and we put out “White Night” in 1978.
“White Night” had a long shelf life: besides The Lines’ original, it was covered by both Torch Song and Adult Net. Although Laurie Mayer, the third member of Torch Song, together with Conning and William Orbit, sang the version that appeared on their album, a version also exists with Sarah Blackwood of Dubstar and Client. Adult Net, the band launched by Brix Smith after she left The Fall, took a more indie route with its version.
Although major success proved elusive, The Lines or its members crossed paths with many of the key players in the city’s independent music scene. Recording at Blackwing Studios, they returned one time to find Vince Clarke and Alison Moyet concluding the first Yazoo single, “Only You.” The band had been drawn to Blackwing by the sound of Dome, the Lewis-Gilbert side project, and Conning went on to work with all of Wire as a mixing engineer for “Eardrum Buzz.” That was only one of many assignments given by Daniel Miller to Conning, who became one of Mute Records’ house studio gurus, recording or mixing Depeche Mode, Erasure, Laibach, Renegade Soundwave and Frank Tovey.
Conning recalls:
I had known Daniel, anyway, from the late 1970s, and The Lines were gigging at about the same time, and our drummer was in Fad Gadget’s band. I did know Daniel vaguely, and one day he turned up at Guerilla, where I worked, to mix some Depeche Mode live tapes. He asked me to do a few of the mixes by myself. He asked me to do “Black Celebration.” After that, he asked me to do “A Question of Time.” They were both good mixes, and then the one I did with Daniel after that was a really good mix which I think actually affected the career of the band – the Blind Mix of “Strangelove” – was a pretty important mix for them. It was the main single out here in the States.
It was another Mute favourite, John Fryer, who did a lot of the studio work on The Lines’ first two full-length albums, Therapy and Ultramarine, together with studio boss Eric Radcliffe. Fryer, one of two permanent members of This Mortal Coil, had developed a reputation as an experimental engineer, and his ability to cope with reel-to-reel tape loops, wrapped around the studio premises, was one of the attractions for the band. Like Dome, The Lines played the studio as an instrument, and their sound owes a lot to the creative setting in Southwark.
After those albums, the band went on hiatus. It was never officially dissolved, but the band members all went in different directions: Conning assumed a job as engineer at William Orbit‘s Guerilla Studios and as a member of Torch Song (just listen to his work on S-Express’ glorious “Mantra for a State of Mind” with Orbit to see where he was going); Cash had his Fad Gadget responsibilities; and Forty and Linehan each went on Eastern travels. Although tracks were in demand for compilations and a retrospective was issued in 2008, it seemed a remote prospect that new material would be forthcoming from The Lines.
Fast forward to 2016, then, and one of the surprises of the year is the release of hull down, the third album from The Lines. Although the original demos had been recorded in 1982-3, and some attempt had been made to improve the recordings in 1987 for a potential release through IRS, the material had to be parked until 2004. That’s when Conning digitised the tracks and started to play with them in Pro Tools; blending the versions to create something new and potent.
We tracked down Conning at his Los Angeles base to learn something about the story of the album. He told us:
This is an attempt to realise what we were trying to realise back then, with the benefit of hindsight. All I did, on some of the tracks, was blend very early demos with much later, much more polished, 8-track versions. When I did that, it was a bit of a revelation. In a couple of cases, particularly – I would say “Flat Feet” and “Archway” – I had no idea what to do with those two until I blended the earliest demo with the later thing. With a couple of others – “Raffle” and “Haberdasher” – it was a similar thing, but in those cases the demo starts and finishes the track and the later development is in the middle.
Although the product of work that began in the 1980s, the sound of hull down remains fresh. “Flat Feet,” the lead track, is rhythmically vigorous and filled with enough authentically snappy analogue sounds to stump even the most jaded hipster. “Single Engine Duster” could be a later-era Wire track, albeit with trombone, Linn drum and Chakk-like funk in the mix. “Nicky Boy’s Groove” features Cash’s TB-303 actually playing a bass line – its sound sitting on the cusp of acid house while guitars and synths drift around in dark, apocalyptic swirls.
Proceedings enter ACR territory with “Zoko Am3,” a track based on a live jam. Conning describes his contribution as a duet with a Watkins Copicat echo unit, and the lines-out soar with a prog-like effect, comparable to the early material from Nash the Slash or Steve Hillage. The use of effects continues with “Where Is the World,” a track that was originally laid down to test out various new gear, including the then-current TR-808. Come “Raffle” and the sound is not a million miles from the Guerilla template: arpeggiators glistening over brilliant, dancefloor-friendly bass lines, while Conning’s vocals come and go as needed.
The pace slows down again for “Archway,” which incorporates Cash’s vibraphone and a Hammond organ in a tribute to the road running under Suicide Bridge. It doesn’t lift for the run-out track, “Haberdashers,” but the sound is much more easily located in its time, using Laurie Mayer’s Juno 60 for arpeggiation. The experimentation at the heart of the The Lines is in the clearest relief here, and it is remarkable that IRS didn’t go for it as part of their No Speak series of instrumental albums.
Three decades after the original tracks were laid down to tape, hull down is partly a sign of what could have been for The Lines, but it also contains traces of what has been for its members. More than an artifact, the album is a document for the present, and it’s dense with rich, experimental music that is even better suited to our time.
LINKS:
Rico’s Reel blog
Buy hull down at Carpark Records